


Walking in a Winter Wonderland

by executrix



Category: Blake's 7
Genre: Multi
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-20
Updated: 2020-07-20
Packaged: 2021-03-05 00:00:04
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,932
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25405003
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/executrix/pseuds/executrix
Summary: A training session at a winter resort proves unexpectedly exciting, but Gan Saves The Day.
Relationships: Jenna Stannis/Olag Gan, Jenna Stannis/Vila Restal, Olag Gan/Cally, Olag Gan/Jenna Stannis, Roj Blake/Kerr Avon
Comments: 9
Kudos: 10





	Walking in a Winter Wonderland

1.  
"I'm so pleased," Gan said, his arm slung about his comparatively diminutive partner. "This was Jenna's first day off-piste."

And Avon's nineteenth day piste off, Vila thought. This month.

Avon continued to eat chocolate fondue with a vengeance, plunging the skewered strawberries into the cauldron of hot wet chocolate as if it were the still-beating heart of the Federation. He hoped he could get in a couple of hours' sleep later that night, before sneaking out for his rendezvous. There were SOME advantages to having the bottom bunk.

2\. (But to backtrack a couple of weeks...)  
"Pack your thermal suits!" Blake said cheerfully. "Our next mission starts in thirty days. We'll be helping out the Hoth Reformed Freedom Party with their insurrection. But in the meantime, we'll need some cold-weather combat training."

Oh, chuffing heck, Vila thought. Going outside again. At least inside the ship, huge as it was, you sort of knew where you were. For no reason Vila could decipher, Blake and Gan and Cally actually seemed to like arsing about outdoors. 

And there's probably worse than that to come, Vila thought. Camping out. Loitering within tents was one of his least favorite minor offenses.

"Cheer up, Vila," Blake said, surveying his crewmate's fallen face. "Cally has signed us up at a very favorable end-of-season rate for a fortnight on Flammarion, out in Sector Six."

"Known to some as the Satellite of Snow," Avon said fatalistically.

3.  
The snow was general all over Flammarion, falling alike on the living and the dead. For half the year, the !@##$%^ stuff never STOPPED falling, arriving quite predictably each night between two and four am. Then every morning the brilliant sun sparkled on a new layer of sugary fresh powder. 

After a brief mud season, the snow disappeared each year (except for a frosting on the very tops of the highest mountains), and the surf was up and the waves were rad.

Most of the sentients in the Universe had never heard of Flammarion, of course. A few paid exorbitant charges to visit, and a larger group yearned but couldn't afford the tariffs. A small, elite group migrated there, to follow the slopes and the waves. The most athletic and best-looking got the coveted spots as resort staff and instructors. But you had to take it on faith that certain individuals were good-looking, unless you adopted culture-neutral criteria such as tentacle symmetry and pelt glossiness.

4.  
"Well, I wasn't to know, was I?" Cally asked, reasonably. When she made the booking, the crew had consisted of six individuals rather than the current roster of three couples. 

Their self-catering chalet had three sinks, two showers, two WCs, and a sort of vertical bathtub cabinet; a sink, stove, and a wire basket suspended out the window in lieu of refrigerator. In the main room, there were two sofas and two overstuffed chairs and a fireplace supplemented with a round-bellied tiled stove. And off to one side were three bunk beds, one partitioned off with blankets and obviously intended for Jenna and Cally.

"I know...let's just take out all the mattresses and sort of put them in the middle..." Vila began, without much hope. Thus the assorted glares, throat-clearings, and yelps of negation didn't bother him very much. 

It was pretty obvious that Gan had better take the bottom bunk, or the whole thing was likely to heel over in the night, so Vila scrambled up the ladder and put the case with his pyjamas under the pillow.

Jenna and Cally, behind the Walls of Jericho, had been working together long enough to assume, without discussion, that they'd alternate between the top and bottom bunks. 

"Oh, go ahead, Blake, have the top bunk," Avon said magnanimously. No need, after all, to mention that vertical ladders were enough to make his head swim, and an upper bunk, with its terrifying lack of boundaries, was distressing.

5.  
Next came a tour of the entire facility. 

"Can we change the booking, and get three double rooms rather than a chalet?" Jenna asked.

Jens-Willum, one of the team of large, amiable blond ski instructors, told her that unfortunately just after they booked in, a dental convention had taken all the remaining rooms. They were, so to speak, as tightly packed as nice healthy molars.

He showed them the three restaurants, the swimming pool, the whirlpool baths, the gymnasiums, the beauty salon, the shop...

"If it's supposed to be all hot, and you've got an entire hotel, why is it outside?" Vila asked.

Jens-Willum said that the sauna was part of a cherished ritual: dry heat, stimulating the circulation with birch twigs, rolling in the snow...

"Is that an all-or-nothing proposition?" Avon asked.

6.  
In the morning, Jens-Willum met with each of them individually, to assess physique, physiology, and sporting history. Then he made a final entry on the papers on his clipboard, snapped the top back on his fountain pen, and gathered the crew together. 

"Well, my friend, there's not much we can do for you," he said to Gan, handing him a plastic square marked with a black diamond. Gan beamed and clipped it to the front zipper of his parka. (He wore an advanced expedition parka system with various specialized bits that zipped on and off and reversed.) "Unless you want to go to the freestyle clinic tomorrow afternoon."

Vila asked Gan where he learned to ski. "Oh, the lot of us used to go on holiday together, from the Fffff...." (Gan started to stay First Federated Bank of Demeter, but stopped himself) "....ffarming cooperative." It did not seem expedient to mention that they chartered a cruiser and went to a luxury resort in Helvetiadome. "The simple rural pleasures, communing with nature, and so forth. It's awfully good fun. You'll love it."

"The rest of you are beginners, of course," Jens-Willum continued. You and you I have placed in the fast group," he said, handing blue badges spangled with daisies to Jenna and Vila. "And you in the slow." He passed a badge to Cally, at his side, and one to Blake, who was standing just behind him. This gave Jens-Willum and Blake equal benefit from the death glare that Avon directed impartially at them, as he adorned his anorak with a yellow plastic badge. With a bunny on it. A pink bunny.

7.  
"He's disappeared again," Jenna said, ladling gluhwein into a glass mug.

"No I haven't," Avon said, handing her a holocard shimmering on a base of gold. "One for everybody," he said.

"What's that you're wearing?" Cally asked. Avon unzipped his quilted black leather parka, with an aureole of toffee-blond fur around the hood. (He also had a pair of earmuffs, because the fur looked so wonderful as a collar and so stupid when the hood was zipped up.) Underneath was a midnight blue boiler suit--literally, it had built-in slimline heating elements--relieved only by a silver stripe on the outside of the left arm and one on the inside of the right leg. It took minutes for Blake's eyes to focus. 

"As I was saying," Avon said, handing one a holocard to Cally. "I had a chat with the hotel manager and happened to mention the deposit code for this canton's real estate taxes. So he said we could each have a drawing account of up to 500 credits at the shop."

He passed the cards around the circle, Blake's last. Someday, Avon thought, you won't be the one handing out all the perks.

8.  
Bright and early the next morning, they hiked up the trail, led by Gan. When he stopped, they all stopped.

Avon put one black-gloved hand over his eyes and looked up into the dazzling sky. "I don't hear anything. How do we get to the top of the mountain? Well, the bit of the mountain that each of us skis down from, at any rate." (He had most need of blessing, but "bunny slope" stuck in his throat.) "Is it a flyer or a helicopter?"

Gan laughed, as the ski lift swung into operation. He settled a sort of shooting-stick between his legs, and then he left the ground and went up in the air, a large and vivid green dot against the white landscape dotted with the dark lace of evergreens. 

"D'ye know," Gan said that night at dinner, heaping a crispbread with smoked reindeer, "There was the most astonishing fellow outon the slope today. Big hairy chap, horns must have been four feet on center. Not much of a conversationalist, but I tell you, what extreme moves. A lot of people don't like sharing the slopes with snowboarders, but I say, round here there's plenty of powder for everyone."

9.  
It was Gan and Jenna's turn to have the chalet to themselves, so Vila went for a walk. Blake was up on the ship just to check that everything was all right. Avon was getting a massage--from a robot, having seen pictures of the muscular blond masseur and willowy brunette masseuse and decided to avoid the near occasions of sin.

Part-way to the ski slopes and the cross-country trail, Vila found a large hexagonal area that was railed off. In the middle was a sort of pavilion, from which sentimental music--generally in three-quarter time--emerged. Vila watched for a while. 

The people there were in regular ski clothes, but had leather boots on their feet with a sort of knife built in. Further observation showed that they must have been doing pretty much what he and his mates used to do when they attached wheels that they had, umm, found somewhere, to bits of metal, and then hooked rides on the slipstream of trams and delivery wagons.

Vila had a good sense of balance. Although the blade beneath his foot made him feel a bit Little Mermaid-ish, it didn't take him long to grasp the basic principle. He spent the first few minutes clinging to the railings of the ice rink, despairingly kicking one foot and then the other, but soon he was gliding along pretty smoothly.

Can't wait to show Cally, he thought. He found her in the shop, deciding between a celadon green overall with its slightly darker short jacket, and yellow stretch pants and a long hooded coat striped in yellow and white. (Vila still wore his Liberator thermal suit; he cashed in the voucher for 375 credits, highway robbery but what could you do?)

"It's cold out there and warm in here," Cally said discouragingly.

"Yeh, but once you move around it warms you up, and you'll look ever so pretty with your face all glowing. And they sell hot drinks and that if you want to take a break."

After about half an hour, Vila surrendered to Cally's pointed consultation of her wristchron, and admitted that Jenna and Gan could no longer expect to have the place to themselves. Even Vila longed for the crackling log fire.

"Had a nice time?" Gan asked, putting his feet up on the coffee table hewn out of halved, rough-barked logs. "Check," he said to Jenna, who squinted down at the chessboard.

"I've just been sitting on my arse in cracked ice," Cally said. "That'll stand me in good stead if I ever get reincarnated as a prawn cocktail. Otherwise, I'd call it a dead loss. And my ankles hurt."

10.  
There was one more surprise in the toe of the stocking. The manager agreed that Avon and Blake could have the sauna to themselves, for three-quarters of an hour, in the middle of Wednesday afternoon (which was Cally and Vila's turn for privacy anyway, and Jenna's rotation back to the ship). Avon wondered if the manager was going to hang a "Closed--Private Party" sign on the door of the sauna hut.

Avon had savored the scene in his imagination several times already, refining the details. The aroma of the satiny wood, and the incense spices burned with the coals heating the sauna. The warm, dim glow of the candlelight bulbs. Blake, sitting on the top shelf, with a fluffy white towel draped across his lap and another one slung over his shoulder, like a connect-the-dots toga. 

A few murmurous minutes of rare friendly conversation--at any rate, contentious topics would have to be avoided on the off-chance that walls have ears. Then Avon would reach across to one of the sweet, square bear-paw feet dangling overhead, and lick between the toes, conscientiously collecting the whole set. Surround the arches of Blake's feet with his mouth, and move along sturdy ten-pins of calves, massaging as well as nibbling. 

The trickle of a big round drop of sweat along one of Blake's thighs would be the signal to trace it all the way back, and bury his face, setting his timing just ahead of Blake's groans and the hands tightening on his shoulder and in his hair.

They had been fucking so often that the sharp urgent taste was no longer there when Blake exploded in his mouth. The difference between bittersweet and white chocolate. But Avon found white chocolate quite acceptable, warmed to the melting point and drenching a strawberry.

That was Avon's favorite time, when Blake was pleased and relaxed and lissome with satisfaction. You could do anything to him then--fuck him, sell him double glazing. Avon looked forward to that moment. heat superimposed on heat, gliding along the sweat on their torsos, warm at last and relishing the only slippery bit of the whole planet that wasn't out to get him.

"They're shutting it down on Wednesday? Not much of a loss, that," Blake replied when Avon told him. "I never could abide that sort of place myself. I daresay you'd like to see me roasted with an apple in my mouth, Avon, but you're not getting me onto a platter that quickly." 

For a moment they gazed past each other, like a steel engraving of a householder removing deceased small vermin from his pillow. From his point of view, the caption is "Gross me out." However, POV the feline donor grooming himself in the foreground, the caption is "Ingratitude."

"Quite," Avon said, and walked out of the chalet toward an undisclosed destination.

Blake shook his head. There was no reasoning with Avon when he got into that sort of mood, for God knows what reason. Blake hoped against hope that it was a purely personal one, but it could be too dangerous, for everyone, merely to let himself accept the simple explanation. He needed so much to be able to rely on Avon, who did so much less than nothing to reassure him.

11.  
"Do you know what Avon is planning?" Blake asked.

+What is the essential part of your question--do you wish insight into the plan, or merely whether I am acquainted with it?+

"Just tell me what he's up to."

+He made an appointment for tonight, in the middle of the monsoon, with Vibeke. You know, the ski instructor. The one with the big...+

"All the girl ski instructors are like that. Why the hell did he do that?"

+She can give him what you can't!...Eeepeeepeepeep...+ Orac subsided into hideous screeches of electronic hilarity. Just as Orac suspected, Blake pulled out the key and tossed it across the room before Orac could finish the sentence with +You're not a very good skier, are you? Not that much better than he is.+

12.  
Jenna leaned over the railing of the ice rink. It looked like fun--some of the same gliding freedom that she loved about controlling the vast ship tearing through space. She spotted a familiar parka, about a third of the way toward the center of the rink. 

Vila looked far more relaxed and happier than he usually did, particularly under conditions of sobriety. He glided for a little while, then tipped up onto the toes of his skates to stop, and tipped back again. Then he'd try to go backwards, but it was obvious that he found this more difficult.

A few minutes later, Vila skated toward the railing, stopped at the kiosk, and bought a cup of cocoa. He leaned against the railing to drink it, and spotted Jenna.

"Ever done this?" he asked. 

"No, never."

Vila's face fell. "I suppose you should get some lessons, I was pretty duff at teaching Cally."

"Oh, well, perhaps she likes to think that she's the one with all the answers."

"Tell you what...want to go and rent some of the boot things? My slate."

Jenna nodded, wondering how long it had been since Vila bought a round. 

Vila was surprised at how quickly Jenna cottoned on. If you'd asked him, he'd have said that Cally was the more athletic of the two. Naturally Jenna took a few spills, some of which pulled Vila down with her, but with a steadying arm around her waist she was soon upright and making progress around the rink. 

From time to time Vila said a few words, nothing of terrible significance. Jenna liked that, it was so unlike her recent experience. 

The disclosure of his past had released a torrent of suppressed lectures on financial topics from deep within Gan. Jenna knew a jumbo CD when she saw one, but in essence she faced the dilemma of all partners of persons in the financial services industry. Was the bonking she was getting worth the banking she was getting?

Vila clasped both of the pink mittens emerging from the white fur cuffs of Jenna's peach-colored parka. "On three," he said, and they glided off together as the loudspeaker in the kiosk played. 

_Lover, when you're near me  
And I hear you speak my name  
Softly in my ear you breathe a flame.__

Breathe a flame, eh? Vila thought. He knew about the little dragon from Orac, and he looked forward to seeing it himself.

13.  
Blake, nearly overbalanced by the leaden heaviness within his heart, crept down the corridor, one hand on the clipgun in the pocket of his parka. He supposed that Avon and Vibeke would probably be in the staff chalet. He didn't know which room was Vibeke's. In his present frame of mind, he was looking forward to overcoming some poor sod's recalcitrance in order to get the information.

Hobson's Choice, he thought, one syllable to each plodding step. Will I be relieved to find that Avon is brokering a deal to save his own neck and sell us all? At least I know that he'll sell our lives dearly. Or will I be relieved to find that he has kept faith with me and my crew politically but betrayed me sexually?

To avoid the heavy fall of snow, Blake went through one of the passages linking the various buildings. At monsoon time, the passages were echoingly empty, only a few security lights on, casting ghostly shadows. 

He was astonished to hear Vibeke's voice emerging from one of the rooms beneath the main lobby of the hotel. He drew nearer.

"Yes," she said. "Yes, that's right. Work out the stiffness."

"Oh--sorry--it's hard to keep my balance," Avon said, his voice a little distorted by the door and the wool fabric lining the corridor.

"Good," Vibeke said. "Yes, that is much better than yesterday morning." 

Yesterday morning? Blake thought. I'll swing for the bastard.

"Now put your heel on the opposite buttock," Vibeke said. Yes, like that. Now bend forward--stretch out your hand, I will not permit you to fall. Yes. Straighten up. And the other side, now."

Blake stood out in the corridor for a moment, trying to work all that out. Then he pushed open the door, which, as he noticed as he was half-way through, carried a nameplate, "Simulator #3."

The room was almost pitch-dark, lit only by a few twinkles of light from the floor--and the increasing glow from the monitor that Vibeke was configuring, her back to the door. Blake could barely see Avon. The top of his head faced Blake, as he stretched out his hamstrings, his hands on the floor, his legs extended in a wide lunge. When he stood up (none too comfortably), Blake saw the gleam of his face and a triangle of white poloneck beneath a deep crimson jacket. His black leggings and soft boots melted into the dimness.

"Hullo, Blake. What are you doing here?" Avon hoped that Blake would put away the gun before he frightened Vibeke. As for himself, he recalled with some embarrassment that he had pulled a gun on Blake at a very early stage in their acquaintance, and turnabout was fair play.

"What am I doing here? You sneak off in the middle of the night..."

"Well, what's it to you? And why shouldn't I..."

"The simulator is ready," Vibeke said severely. "It costs a hundred fifty credits an hour to rent the room and my services," she said, just as Avon said, "...take a skiing lesson if I probably couldn't sleep anyway?"

Although it did cost a hundred and fifty credits, strictly speaking Avon hadn't paid: he was comped by the management, for arranging a continued supply of thirty-seven-credit-a-pound smoked reindeer without additional payments. After one bite of smoked reindeer carpaccio, Avon had decided that actually paying for it was worse than a crime, it was an error.

"You didn't tell me," Blake said.

"You didn't ask me."

"What do you expect me to do, put in a requisition every morning for a list of everything you're planning to conceal from me that day?"

"I'm busy," Avon said.

Blake slammed the door.

Avon stalked over to the simulator, looped his hands through the tethers for the poles, and gave a vicious kick. This landed him flat on his ass (not for the first or last time in his skiing holiday). The simulator helpfully supplied the familiar but still loathed sensation of a jet of snow spraying up the back of his parka and melting there, soaking into clothes, and making him more miserable than before.

"You are a fool," Vibeke said. "I bet that you are a boyfriend just like you ski."

"Freezing cold and often flat on my back? No doubt. Well, if you were a puppeteer, I'd pay more than a hundred fifty credits an hour to be told I'm a fool. Or rather, to be told nothing at all beyond a few commonplaces to encourage me to talk."

"In the day, immediately you are not the best, so you say you do not try. Then at night you conceal yourself to make efforts so the next day no one will know."

"If even Vila can do it, then I will find whatever means are necessary to succeed."

Vibeke shook her head. Perhaps Blake was a fool too. Most people would fancy the dark one more, unless Blake thought that touching off the heat within him would be like putting your hand on a glowing stove. Vibeke found teaching Vila a pleasure--he didn't worry a bit and did exactly as he was told--so it could be he was like that too.

14.  
"Cally, I haven't been quite honest with the crew, about myself," Gan told her.

Cally's eyebrows shot upwards. {Three out of four of your men? Does that always happen with humans? How do you populate the planet? But anyway, aren't you with Jenna?}

"Oh, sorry, that's not what I was going to say. No, I meant about my life before I got into trouble."

"I knew it!" Cally said heatedly. "I didn't think you'd ever killed anyone, not outside a war."

"Well, actually, I'm afraid that I did. I'd call it justifiable homicide, but nevertheless I did kill him and I'm sorry for it. What I mean is that I wasn't very candid about my background. What I used to do for a living. I told Jenna, of course, but not the others."

Once again, he made the great revelation. "How fascinating!" Cally breathed.

Half an hour later, Vila passed them on the sofa, on his way to brew up. 

"...and they'd been all over the worlds, but before they got to us the best rate anyone offered them was Gauda Prime plus two," Gan said.

"That's awful!" Cally said. "Why, that would have killed off the whole thing in just a couple of seasons...."

Vila didn't know what to make of it at all.

15.  
"Err, the reason I called this meeting..." Vila said, savoring both the sensation of having called a meeting and the sheer absurdity, "Is that, well, you know, for ages we didn't do anything with each other 'cos we thought we had enough problems already. And then, well you know, we did."

"I'm not sure we weren't helped along," Cally said darkly. 

"What, taken over again?" Jenna asked.

"No, nothing like that," Cally said. "But we were acting one way before those injections, and quite another way afterwards."

"Well, who's in charge of the sick bay, then?" Jenna said.

"Cally and I," Gan said firmly. "Want to make something of it?"

Jenna flashed him a "guess who's not getting his greens tonight" look.

"Well, that's sort of what I meant," Vila said. "Especially if there's somebody else we can blame for it, well, maybe we should have done it the other way round."

"Chop and change, eh?" Gan said.

Vila, holding his breath, nodded. 

"We'll have to hear what the girls have to say, of course, but I don't mind," Gan said.

16.  
It was the last day of the fortnight. Jenna and Vila were already back on the ship, nominally absorbed in maintenance and status checks. Vila had a healthy skepticism of holiday romances, so he hoped to get his leg over a couple of times before Jenna changed her mind and conditions returned to normal.

Down on Flammarion, Avon accelerated. He hoped that if he got ahead of Blake on the trail, he wouldn't have to look at Blake's cross-country skiing rig-out (corduroy plus-fours, colored somewhere between topaz and tobacco; ragg wool socks; and a predominantly gray reindeer sweater made on a jacquard loom programmed to omit one antler on every five reindeer, and one ear on every six, in the interests of folkloric authenticity). 

Taken by itself, Avon would probably have detested cross-country skiing. However, compared to downhill skiing, it was adorable. It generated enough effort to keep a person reasonably warm, yet with enough breath left to squabble. So they slid down the trail, quiet but resonant voices and the hissing glide of well-waxed skis on well-packed snow.

"Oh, leave it out," Blake said in response to the latest Parthian shot. "Yes, I looked a bloody fool. The only way it could have been worse would be if I shot the lot of you and it turned out that you were all going behind my back to plan my birthday party."

'It always bemuses me that you should be so insecure."

"Really? What about not knowing from day to day if you'll stay or go?"

"You might feel surer if you hadn't spent those first months telling everyone who disagreed with you that he or she was quite free to leave at any time."

"Nobody disagreed with me except you." 

"I'm still here, contrary to my better judgment. But that's not really what concerns you," Avon said.

"Admittedly it's a great relief that I don't have to worry about turning a corner on the ship and finding you snogging the gas meter reader. But any day we might turn up someplace that has gas meters."

"An undistinguished body. An empty heart. Entirely yours as it happens, but I can't see how you would be harmed if that were not the case."

"You couldn't say that if you knew anything about love," Blake said.

"No doubt. Ask anybody."

"Why do you have to keep trying to push me away?"

"It's only money that I don't mind obtaining under false pretenses." 

Then Avon's mood changed from annoyance to alertness and dread. There's another sound, he thought. Someone else is here, but not someone friendly or neutral. "Blake--get down," he shouted, wondering if it made more sense to kick off the skis or try to sprawl on the snow with the skis still on, to facilitate maneuvers.

The hissing of skis, closer and faster, and the loud crack and green flash of a lazeron beam passing close overhead. Avon and Blake saw skis cutting the snow, saw a white suit white parka white anorak white skin black eyepatch heading toward them....

Avon unzipped his jacket pocket, took out the pistol (he was a better shot with his more familiar Liberator handgun, but the charger spoiled the line of the boiler suit) and missed the moving target offered by Travis' zig-zag course.

Blake headed toward Travis, shifting his path to ski in on the blind side. I may not have a gun, he thought, but I don't think he'll like it much if I skewer him with this pole.

Fucking marvelous, Avon thought, trying to force a fresh clip into the pistol with cold-stiffened gloved hands. Now I haven't a hope of getting a clean shot. He struggled to his feet, got the skis under him again, and headed off toward the trees.

Blake and Travis jousted with ski poles. Blake was hampered by his inexperience in this slippery form of quarterstaff combat. Travis was hampered by the division in his soul, between obedience to his simple clear orders to capture Blake and his profound desire to kill him on the spot. 

Avon set his trajectory to arrive behind Travis, who, however, was not being particularly cooperative about staying in one place. One of Avon's heels came out of the ski binding, and he sprawled, dropping the gun. In the time it took to pick up the gun again and fix the binding, Travis dropped the ski pole, pulled a dart gun out of the front pocket of his dazzling white anorak, and fired at Avon.

The tranquilizer dart glanced off Avon's black leather jacket and fell to the ground.

Blake knocked the dart gun out of Travis' hand, twisted his unaltered arm behind his back, and forced him to his knees in the snow. "Don't," he told Avon, who was engaged in checking the continued operability of the pistol.

"Not again," Avon said resignedly. 

"That would prove we aren't any better than he is," Blake said, just as Avon relieved his feelings somewhat by smashing the pistol against Travis' face, precipitating him out of Blake's grip and down onto the snow in a small splash of crimson. 

"That would reduce our problems materially," Avon said. Not only is it not sporting to kick a man when he's down, it's impossible when you're wearing cross country skis.

Avon heard the clumsy stutter of blades at about the same time that he began to doubt that Travis would arrive equipped with nothing but a dart gun and a grievance. The lazeron must be recharged by now, he couldn't miss at this range....

But he did, when the green bullet of Gan launched out in a magnificent jump from the overhanging slope. One of Gan's ski tips caught Travis, sending him sprawling again, the lazeron beam leaving a scorchmark on the flank of the helicopter that had just arrived to collect him and his prisoner.

The helicopter pilot hovered, irresolute. Travis put his hands together and gestured impatiently. "Just open the cargo bay, you fucking idiot!" he howled, and whether the pilot discerned his meaning, read lips, or telepathed, there was a meeting of the minds and he did open the bay. Travis pulled a reel of herculaneum cable out of the same capacious kangaroo pocket, threw it where the electromagnet hooked on the inside of the cargo bay, hung by the cable for a long moment, his engineered arm clinging tight, and then he climbed hand over hand until he scrambled into the helicopter. The pilot closed the cargo bay and headed off, straight up.

A broad, sweet grin spread over Gan's face. "Well, I'll leave you chaps to it," he said, as Blake and Avon stood motionless, touching not at all except for fingertips just brushing Blake's cheek, Avon's hairline. "I can't wait to go tell Jenna--ah, Cally--all about this." 

17.

Blake, glad to be sitting on his own bed once again, stroked the increasing expanse of Avon's back revealed as he pulled the poloneck over his head. "Looks like you lost a bit of weight. Suits you. Even taking exercise, I think the rest of us put on a kilo or so."

"Naturally I lost weight. After the last run of the day, as soon as I knew I didn't have to get back on the ski lift, I'd find a vacant WC someplace and vomit encyclopedically."

"Good God, why?"

"Vertigo." Being up in the air, undefended, surrounded by miles and miles of nothing, suspended between hostile white fluff and unforgiving blue sky. His idea of nothing to do.

"I never knew, love. It hasn't seemed to trouble you here."

"Liberator is enclosed. She hasn't got any edges. If there were a huge window on the front with a panoramic view, I'd feel sick enough for all normal purposes. Somehow the viewerscreen isn't the same."

"Well, you never said. You could have taken the gondola. You could have not skied, for that matter."

"Oh, it would take far more than that to make me show weakness in front of you, I assure you."

"But why?"

Avon glared at him, visibly wondering whether the chap with the butterfly net would arrive in time. "Because I love you."

Blake shook his head minutely. He felt as if he spent half his life watching Avon assiduously lead-plate a golden casket. If you do love me you will find me out.

"You've got a funny way of showing it."

"Now that we've got a bit of privacy, would you settle for the orthodox method?" Which was all the apology and all the explanation on offer at the moment.

18.  
Blake woke up after six minutes or so. He never dreamed at these desperately-loved times, which were pure and empty and somehow. absolutely blissful. He couldn't have been any happier if he had been surrounded by amniotic fluid. He would always be grateful to Avon for being his only source of this refuge and surcease.

Blake's head rested on Avon's left arm. He looked over at his partner's face. Nestled in the middle of the fluffy black fan of eyelashes--marabou dipped in coal dust--was one white eyelash. Blake decided not to mention it, he knew how much Avon would hate it. 

Whatever happens, we'll not grow old together, Blake thought, and it wrung his heart. But even if I'm doomed to lose him, one way or another, I haven't lost him yet. Avon--who hadn't been asleep, he only closed his eyes because faces look so peculiar at such short range--opened his eyes as Blake gently traced the arch from the tip of one ear to the earlobe.

Avon turned to put his other arm around Blake and bent his head to kiss the corner of one of Blake's eyes. Which, Blake thought, was not very much and all he was going to get and enough.

Now, while you're here in my arms...  
Now, while there's music and moonlight  
And love and romance...  
Let's face the music and dance.


End file.
